Honestly the title of this post is terrible, as is the amount of misinformation in this thread.

The purpose of a back tension release is to ensure the the arrow leaves the bow from the same point every time. It's got nothing to do with it being a surprise. If a compound archer is surprised by the release they are 100% not a "pro archer". A professional competing archer will have shot thousands of arrows and will know exactly when the arrow is going to release.

They can be a useful aid for people suffering target panic but they are in no way a solution.

Edit: Myriad of typos...

A hinge is a surprise like the 2nd time.... It's not a surprise after you practice.

This title is like saying it's a surprise when you press the gas pedal and car accelerates

Gasp no way

My guess is its more about pulling on the bow as the focus instead of pulling a trigger.

The tension doesn’t make sense. Everyone uses compound bows, so there’s less tension at full draw than while you’re pulling back. It sounds like with these releases you draw, aim, then pull back until it fires at some point.

That honestly sounds much more smooth to me. One of the hardest issues with a standard release is eliminating that slight jerk when you pull the trigger with your finger. Pulling straight back there’s no jerk at all.

I believe it's surprise for the body rather than "surprise" in the standard sense. The idea is that you're doing a single motion that triggers a release rather than that motion plus an anticipatory release of the fingers/trigger pull which can cause the body to jerk. More of a "get ready and it releases on its own when it's in the right place" vs "get ready, then fire".

It’s normally called a “back-tension release”, and it is typically only used in competition shooting with fixed targets. You would never use one hunting because sometimes you have to keep the bow at full draw for a period of time while you find the best shot or wait for other factors. As an archer you aren’t thinking about the tension on the string but instead the tension on your shoulder blades as you bring them together during your shot cycle. Focusing on your body during your shot cycle is what can lead to the “surprise shot”. But yes you still have a general understanding of when the bow will fire, though since there is not a trigger it is highly unlikely for you the “punch” the trigger or push/pull the bow out of alignment with your shot cycle.

I’m not even a good archer. But the idea is that the bow going off is like an explosion and the human mind hates explosions. Your body will shrug your shoulders and close your eyes to try and prepare you for the shock of if. Those movements will make you miss at any real distance.

Again, I don’t fully understand it, but the aiming is easy. Just close one eye and hold you thumb up to any target. You brain just does it. The hard part is not messing it up once it’s aimed.

The difference is what actuates the release. In a standard release, you use your fingers (index or thumb) to release the arrow. The problem is that fingers are sensitive and prone to twitchy behavior, which means anticipating the shot leads to premature releases (which we call “target panic”). Your eyes see the target and it tells your twitchy fingers “release the arrow NOW or you’ll run out of time!”. Releasing with the fingers is a conscious decision that eventually becomes an unconscious one due to anxiety, leading to premature shots. A surprise release device (also called a “back tension release”) uses a different muscle group to release the arrow. You see, with a surprise release device us archers are taught to use the muscles in our backs to pull the string (specifically the rhomboid muscle). Flexing the rhomboid is a slow and steady process, since the rhomboid isn’t a twitchy muscle. So what ends up happening is we squeeze our rhomboid muscle which at some point along that flexion of the rhomboid, it triggers the surprise release aid to release the arrow. We don’t consciously know when flexing our back muscle will trigger the release, so we can just focus on the target.

My thought is that you have a few and they can be swapped out. So you don't know which one you have

It's almost as if it's for practice to get used to the shock of releasing all that force which could cause you to misfire. As your muscle memory builds, yes, you will get better at knowing exactly when that arrow will fire, but you were also training your brain for the steady release

I mean, a jack in the box always pops out at the same point in the song right? And yet it's still surprising. But you're not pressing a button to make it activate, it happens at a point abstracted away from your direct attention. It's always worse beforehand if you slow down and try to predict when it'll happen, so you just keep going without regard for the exact moment it pops. When it pops, if you react, that reaction follows the pop instead of preceding it.

The point is that you train your body to continue with a smooth continuous motion until it lets go on its own, and you train mentally to focus on the draw instead of the release. You aren't in a position where you're anticipating opening your hand and tensing up your body to get ready for the shock.

At X tension it is released vs w/o the mechanism they must release optimally at around X(give or take Y). When trying to control it themselves, they attempt to reach X tension but in their attempt to do so they wince since you must purposely release the tension instead of it just having it go on its own. This wince is a reflex to an act you are trying to accomplish (purposely release the tension). This wince is bad for control.

When the surprise mechanism goes off, you still do you natural reflex, but the difference here is that the reflex occurs after the release (a consequence of the act instead of bracing for it) so that miniscule movement should not affect the trajectory as the arrow has already been released.

Ah yes, clearly you've figured out what the professionals haven't. Someone should tell them.

Yes. I guess if you keep pulling back it releases eventually but part of becoming skilled is repeating the same motion as exactly as you can. You pull it the same distance to the same place. Like on the photo you pick a place you can feel like your cheek.

These mechanisms don't really release at a specific tension and it's definitely not supposed to be a surprise. They release abruptly as you rotate the handle and with practice, this can make the archer much more consistent as you go from fully drawn to released in a fraction of the time you could releasing the drawn bow with your soft fingers.

When you release a bow with your fingers there is a much higher chance that you impart some force on the string (and bow) which means your arrows aren't going to fly true.

Its probably just a catchy name for the technique

It didn’t explicitly say that it releases at the same level of tension every single time. In my mind there’s a small computer that will RNG an a mount of time after you’ve pulled back and then randomly releases. So still a surprise.

Not really. That's not how muscle memory works.

Your explanation makes much more sense.

A weapon with surprise built in is the unsafe and dumbest take I’ve ever heard.

This sounds a lot more how it worked for me. I knew there was an angle involved and would draw the bow with just my index and middle finger under tension, then when I was ready to shoot I'd engage the ring and little fingers too, and pull back with the whole hand. It was still a "surprise" release because I was just pulling smoothly instead of effectively pulling a trigger with my ring finger.

Especially at 3-D shoots. If it’s a surprise then that means it’s the wood’s arrow now. You can try looking for it, but good luck.

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Like I tell my wife, surprise release happens to all men sometimes and she should be flattered.

Theme AT-AT E.R.

It's a Star Wars themed emergency room, at a private children's hospital owned by Disney.

It's Therapist Finder's alt account.

A meateater is a neutral third party who helps to resolve arguments or disputes smh think before you comment

I think it's quite amusing to learn that it's an intentional strategy.

Consciousness is often lauded as the most important feature of humanity, especially because it is "us", but it gets in the way incredibly often.

Generally speaking, we perform more poorly on most tasks when we have greater awareness of what we're doing. Anybody who has played an instrument knows what it's like to suddenly become aware of what your fingers are doing and miraculously losing the ability to play. Stepping in front of a group to read a well-rehearsed essay only to forget the words, finding yourself inexplicably "manually walking" past your crush in an empty hallway, so on.

Inversely, we're capable of grand feats of intuitive functionality when we're not paying attention ranging from spontaneous mathematical solutions, motor control, recollection, and problem solving. There's endless examples to choose from, each suggesting that the conscious self isn't often even "doing the work" at all, merely taking credit for answers that were performed elsewhere with a wink, like a student being passed notes during a quiz.

Whenever "we" try to do those things consciously - manually - we find ourselves performing poorly, even ineptly. We often think about our conscious selves as the driver behind the wheel, but we're more like the person in the passenger seat. We can reach over to grab the wheel to steer the car, but we're not going to do it well. We can change the radio station, but when we look away it'll often be tuned to a different station again.

When we look at one of our closest evolutionary ancestors, we even see that they outperform us cognitively in various ways. There's videos of infant chimpanzees kicking the dogcrap out of adult humans in memorization games, for example. When humans are performing with that kind of grace, we're doing it subconsciously or from within a flow state (and those are quite similar, in a sense). That's where the chimp always is.

What's consciousness good at? Managing concepts and abstractions, and overriding conflicting motor impulses. This ability is what allows us to make fire, a task that seems fruitless and painful for many minutes until smoke begins to rise. It's also what allows us to grasp onto a hot bowl of soup rather than dropping it on the floor, an instinct we subvert in favor of avoiding a mess that would also ruin our meal. Looking at our chimp friend, this is precisely where we leave them in the dust.

But when it comes down to just about everything else, other parts of our brains are carrying the load and we're just taking credit for it, often retroactively. This is why we're often so much better at things we're not trying to do, why we suddenly suck at a video game the moment we're showing a friend our skills, and why a moment of high intensity can turn an expert into an apparent novice.

It's no surprise that expert archers have learned to utilize surprise release mechanisms. It's a lesson we can all apply to our own lives, in fact. Whenever I find myself hesitating, I recollect or withdraw because the outcome would have been in conscious hands - and conscious hands aren't good hands except when making a decision to act or not.

I'm not a fan of the movies by any means, but this is probably what Yoda meant when he said "Do or do not do. There is no try."

Trying fails where doing doesn't.

I have always shot a wrist. I don't understand target panic because I first started shooting at about 7 y/o. I'm the guy who would punch his own teeth out learning to shoot a hinge.

Ever had buck fever? Guess what that is the same thing as.

If you read the explanation of what they call “target panic” on your link, there are three explanations for why it exists and has been recognized.

1. Bow feels too heavy
2. Target becomes difficult to aim at (physically or psychologically?)
3. Premature release - inability to come full anchor before releasing the arrow.

So basically we got a bunch of lazy archers who decided utilizing a mechanism to favor equalizing genetics surpasses the utility of choosing accurate and strong bow-shooting. No wonder archery seems pointless as a competitive sport

Nah, it's for all archery, you don't need release mechanism. What might surprise you here, it's basically the same rule as with shooting a gun. You don't pull the trigger, you jest press it gently until the shot surprises you.

99% of rules apply for both archery and gun shooting, like relaxed stance and muscles, focus on aiming sights, properly training muscle memory etc.

Source: soldier and a fan of archery, although just amateur.

Another trick I've seen is to mix snap caps or even just empty casing into the magazine. Makes it easier to see if you've developed a flinch, because you feel your body anticipating a shot that never happens.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time in competitive archery circles. I’d be willing to bet that well over 50% of pros use some sort of hinge style surprise release.

What’s really funny is not a single one of the “pros” named in the article are actually pro archers.

John Dudley is the closest, but he hasn’t competed in 15+ years.

Yeah no idk anyone who has spent any time in archery who has issues with trigger releases. Myself included.

Too bad Herrigel was a Nazi.

If I had to guess, this is an advertisement and the article paid for by the maker of said release mechanism. Just spitballing though

Yeah this is horse shit. Trigger releases are what they use. It's a clamp that holds onto a loop on the bowstring. They have extremely light triggers, comparable if not better than the nicest triggers you can buy on any rifle.

And also with cameras using long lenses

They’re talking about the release, not the bow. A release is something you wear on your hand that connects to the bow string. Once you’re pulled back, the release holds the bow string rather than your fingers. There is a trigger on the release that you pull when your ready to shoot.

These are pro's so I think they know better than your pop lmao

Letting the string slip is a surprise release mechanism!